Dark Eden

43 John Redlantern

Me and Gerry and Jeff went back to Tall Tree Valley. It meant going up over Dark again, but crossing Dark wasn’t the same as it had been before. It didn’t seem so far when you knew for certain there was something there to get to and you knew how to find it. (And that made me realize that it wasn’t really so far back to Circle Valley either. This journey that everyone had said was impossible for five six generations: you could walk whole of it easily in six seven wakings.) We each had a fullgrown woollybuck of our own to ride on now, and we each pulled a big snow-boat behind us. Mine was loaded with food and spare wraps for us. Theirs were piled with things to trade with the Tall Tree people: smooth widebuck skins that they’d never have seen before, and fruits you couldn’t find up there.

It was weird weird when we’d got over the high Dark and dropped down into Tall Tree Valley to find Mehmet and Johnny and Julie still up there near the place where we’d all once lived together after Jeff saved us from Dark. And they were men and women now, young men and women, not newhairs any more, and they had five six little kids running round, and strong strong shelters they’d made with stones. They’d covered them over with branches and sealed up the roofs and walls with mud and buckskins so they’d keep out the cold, even in the snow.

Tom’s dick, they were surprised surprised to see us, surprised and scared, like we were Shadow People or something, come back to life again from death.

‘We thought it might be time to make friends again,’ I told them.

Mehmet stared at me for a moment, and then suddenly he smiled.

‘Friends! Yes, friends!’ He rushed forward to shake my hand. ‘That’s right, John, we should be friends. We’re grownups now, after all, not newhair kids. We should put our little arguments behind us, like kids’ quarrels.’

And he hugged me and gestured to the other Tall Tree people to come and do the same.

‘Let’s get a buck roasting,’ he called out to them. ‘Let’s get the fire built up, get a good blaze going for a big roast.’

Julie kissed me and Gerry and Jeff.

‘Wow, look at you, Jeff!’ said Julie. ‘Wow! You look fine fine. I can’t believe how you’ve changed.’

Who would have thought weird little Jeff would turn out to be the one that girls wanted to slip with as soon as they saw him, clawfeet and all?

‘The others still around, are they?’ I asked. ‘Dave Fishcreek? Angie? Candy?’

‘Candy died having her baby,’ Julie said shortly. ‘The others are out hunting with . . .’

Mehmet hastily interrupted.

‘Yes, I should explain, John. We’ve got a couple of visitors up here from Family. Don’t worry,’ he gave an awkward laugh, ‘it’s not David Redlantern or anyone like that. Just a couple of Fishcreek people, come up to trade a few bucks for some blackglass. I don’t know how you’re fixed where you are, but we haven’t got any blackglass up here and we kind of need it.’

And then he sort of peeked at us, like he was in a hiding place and peering out, and not really standing right there in front of us at all.

‘You got blackglass at all where you are?’ he asked.

‘Come to think of it,’ he said, without even waiting for us to answer that first question, ‘where is it exactly that you’re staying now? Is it far from here?’

‘Not really,’ began Gerry, ‘just over the ridge there and then . . .’

Mehmet was leaning forward, listening intently.

‘Oh, it’s a fair distance,’ I said, to cut Gerry off, ‘quite a few wakings’ journey. That’s why we’ve never been up before.’

Mehmet looked between Gerry and me and smiled his complicated smile. And presently Angie and Dave Fishcreek came back with a couple of young Fishcreek men called Paul and Gerald. Harry’s dick, those two’s faces looked even more like they thought we were Shadow People come back from the dead than the faces of the Tall Tree people had done. As soon as they saw us, they stopped dead where they were, their muscles tensed up, ready to fight or run, and their fingers tightened around their spears. But Mehmet ran over to them, gabbling excitedly.

‘Who’d have thought it, eh? We thought maybe the rest of them hadn’t made it through Dark, after they left us here. But it’s John, look. Old John Redlantern himself, and Gerry and Jeff with him. Nice to see them, eh? Nice to have a chance to put old troubles behind us.’

‘Er . . . yeah . . .’ said Paul Fishcreek and Gerald Fishcreek, uncertainly, still fingering their spears.

‘So how is Family these wakings?’ I asked them. ‘Caroline still Head, is she?’

‘Caroline? Um. Yes,’ said Gerald, looking at Paul.

‘How about our mum?’ Gerry asked. ‘Sue Redlantern. She okay, do you know?’

‘Yeah. She’s good,’ said Paul.

‘You guys still hate us down there, then?’ I asked.

Gerald and Paul Fishcreek looked at each other like they were in agony.

‘Oh no, no . . .’ they both began.

Tom’s dick and Harry’s, there was weird stuff going on, weird weird, but I couldn’t tell exactly what it was. When we’d eaten Tall Tree’s buckmeat and the Tall Tree people had got to their usual sleeping time, I refused Mehmet’s offer of a space in one of their shelters and found somewhere else a little way from them, where me and Jeff and Gerry and our bucks could get some rest with solid rocks against our backs, and could get a good view of anyone that came near.

‘It’s not so cold that we need a shelter,’ I explained to the Tall Tree people, ‘and of course we’ve been keeping different wakings to you. We’ll be more comfortable out there where we can talk and get up and move around without disturbing you.’

I told Gerry and Jeff I’d keep the first lookout, but none of the three of us had actually gone off to sleep when, after an hour or so, we heard someone creeping up. We grabbed our spears ready. But it wasn’t Mehmet or Dave or Johnny or the Fishcreek blokes, which I’d truly thought it might be, sneaking up on us with leopard tooth knives. It was Julie.

‘Hey, Jeff, do you want to slip with me?’

I suppose life wasn’t much fun for them up there. It was cold, and nothing happened, and, when they didn’t have visitors, each of them only had four other people to talk to, apart from the little kids.

‘That would be good, Julie,’ Jeff said.

And he did it with her, right there in the space beside the rock, slowly slowly and gently — and quietly quietly like you do when other people are near — and afterwards he held Julie in his arms on the sleeping skins and they talked, softly softly so as to let me and Gerry sleep if we wanted to. But I didn’t sleep. I lay there listening to the sound of their talking, while the strange tall trees hummed all around us.

Most of the time, it was too quiet for me to hear the words, but once Jeff raised his voice slightly, not in anger (he was hardly ever angry) but firmly to make a point.

‘They were protecting me and Tina, Julie!’ he said. ‘They didn’t just do it for no reason! You know that!’

I didn’t pick up any more of what they said after that but after a while I heard Julie begin to sob and Jeff comfort her. That’s why girls loved him, not only because of his beautiful eyes and his face and his golden hair and his long fine fingers and the way he could slip on and on until they’d had enough, but because he was kind.

Maybe an hour later a kid began to cry over in one of the stone shelters, and Julie recognized it as her own.

‘Michael’s names, Jeff,’ muttered Gerry enviously, after she’d gone. ‘How do you bloody do it?’

But Jeff had more worrying things to talk about.

‘John, Gerry, listen to this,’ he whispered. ‘Mehmet has been down to Family. It wasn’t so long after we left Tall Tree last time. Apparently David Redlantern is the only one who really decides what happens in Family now. He’s got a whole bunch of young guys called Guards, who make people do what he wants, and Caroline doesn’t matter any more. Julie says Mehmet’s done a deal with David to get the friendship of Family back. She doesn’t know what the deal is exactly, and she’s sure that Mehmet hasn’t told them whole story, but she reckons he’s promised he’ll help them to get to you. One thing Mehmet has told her and the other Tall Tree people is that David still wants to kill both of you two, and Harry as well. He still says he wants to spike you up to burn like Jesus, for killing Met and Dixon and John Blueside. And Julie says Mehmet’s told David about Gela’s ring. Apparently David hates you for that too, he hates you for keeping it for yourself.’

‘Bloody Mehmet Batwing,’ I said, taking my spear and jumping up. ‘That treacherous little slinker.’

In my mind I saw that giant bat on the top of the tree, with the slinker creeping up towards it through the steam.

‘I’ll go and do for him now,’ I said. ‘I’ll kill him before he can do any more harm.’

‘That won’t work,’ Jeff said. ‘Just killing another person won’t work.’

Well, no, I had to admit it wouldn’t. Not unless I killed everyone here: the two Fishcreek guys and Johnny and Dave and Angie and Julie and all their kids. Otherwise there’d still be someone left to tell Family that we’d been here and that our camp wasn’t so far away, somewhere just over the ridge.

‘Not all of Family is your enemy,’ Jeff reminded me. ‘And not all of these people here are either, not any more. But if you killed again you’d make more enemies, wouldn’t you? You’d make it easier and easier for everyone to see you as nothing but a killer, like a leopard that needs to be hunted down. You were the first one in Eden to kill a human being, after all.’

Gerry just sat on his sleeping skin looking up at us. This was outside of his reach. This was difficult grownup stuff between me and his little brother.

‘Gela’s eyes,’ I muttered, after I’d thought about it for a bit. ‘I’ve got it all wrong, haven’t I? Things weren’t perfect before I chucked those stones into the stream, but look at it now! I’ve taken Eden and broken it up into pieces.’

There are lots of different stories branching away all the time from every single thing that happens. As soon as a moment has gone, different versions of it start to be remembered and told about. And some of them carry on, and some die out, and you can’t know in advance which version will last and which won’t. It had never occurred to me before that the story of John Redlantern might end up as the story of a famous killer, the first one in Eden ever to do for another human being. But now that story suddenly took shape in my mind.

I could see it being acted out in the future. John the Leopard-Man; John who killed a leopard and ate its heart and somehow the heart crept into him and became his own; John who sang sweetly and treacherously like a leopard does, and promised wonderful things, and made people leave everything and walk towards him, but really all he did was to lead them to their deaths. Death followed after him. It spread out from him across the world like ripples across a pool, like evil ripples. But then at last brave David Redlantern hunted him down, just like you’d hunt down a leopard that had taken to prowling around outside the fence and watching the kids playing inside. Brave ugly David hunted him down with his Guards, and then the world was safe again and Family was whole once more.

‘No, John, you didn’t break it, you opened it up,’ Jeff said. ‘That was why we followed you. It needed to be opened up. It needed to happen.’

He looked at me with his big deep eyes, putting his hands on my shoulders. I’ll tell you, I was pretty near to crying.

‘Still,’ he said, ‘that’s not to say that you don’t sometimes make mistakes.’

I nodded.

‘We’d better go then,’ I said. ‘Let’s just get straight on these bucks and go back over Dark.’

Gerry looked at his brother, his eyes big and as gentle as Jeff’s but without the depth, waiting to hear Jeff’s judgement. Jeff shook his head.

‘That won’t work, though, will it, John? That’ll tell Mehmet we know something. It will tell him that someone here has told us something that worried us enough to make us leave in a hurry. If we don’t want that, we should stay till everyone wakes. We should let them have the widebuck skins and the fruit we’ve brought for them, trade them for some of the blackglass they get from Family. And then we should tell them we’ll come up and see them again soon soon, and hug and kiss them, and say goodbye, and go.’

Gerry looked at me.

I laughed.

‘I didn’t know you were capable of being so devious, Jeff.’

To my surprise, Jeff hung his head. He really hated lies and tricks.

‘I know. But I don’t think we have a choice.’

We looked out at the strange tall trees, humming and shining, with the bats and flutterbyes diving and swooping among their high branches.

‘We are here,’ Jeff muttered, as if to remind himself of a truth that stayed true no matter how much we lied and tricked each other. ‘We really are here.’

I touched Gela’s ring on my little finger, felt its hardness, turned it round a bit. We were brothers and sisters really, all of us, that was the weird part. Me, Mehmet, David Redlantern: every one of us in Eden came from the same mother and the same father.

So when Mehmet and the others began to stir and poke up their fire and get things ready for another waking, we went down to them, pretending that nothing had changed.

‘We need to get back to our own people,’ I told Mehmet. ‘It took us a long long time to get here, and they might think a snow leopard has got us if we don’t show our faces soon. But maybe you’d like to trade with us a bit before we go? We’ve got these skins, look, like woollybuck skins but smooth. And fruit, like you get down in Circle Valley. What can you trade us for this lot?’

And then we were off again, up over Dark, till we came to the ridge looking out over the Wide Forest.

‘Look at that!’ I said. ‘Even from here you can see the smoke of our fire down there. They could easily find us.’

The air was still, and the smoke went straight up like a tree trunk, lit up clear and white by the lanternlight of Wide Forest.

‘Yes, and look at that!’ said Jeff, pointing back.

I looked round. On the snowy slope behind us were three patches of light from the headlanterns of three woollybucks. It was Mehmet and a couple of the others. They’d been behind us all the way, following to see which way we’d go. They’d only need to come as far as this ridge we were on now to see Wide Forest below them, and the smoke rising up from our fire, all lit up by the firelight and by the lanterns all around it. And then Mehmet would know where we were living and he’d know we’d been lying when we said our camp was far away.